Apple steps up iPad 2 campaign to push functionality over hardware specifications - Page 5

Guilty and guilty.

I've been out in the yard digging and planting, and my back and legs are sore. I think I'm entitiled to play that card. I still have the jim Rusten and Ann Jolly cards to play if it gets to that.

Ahh... Nothing beats Mark Eppersen doing a handstand and walking on his hands all the way to Farrels'

/rimshot

There, fixed that for you.

Loved those "troughs" and the Pikes Peak.

... or you could go to the "Turtle" and have 2 Lobbies & a bottle of Chard for less than $20...

Good times!

Actually, you might. At least one car manufacturer put their owner's manual onto the first iPad.

Apparently, opening large documents was not a problem.

Exactly what I was thinking!

Not if someone is underwriting his attempts at FUD...

Hebrews that's such a great analogy .....

As a late entrant to this particular thread, it gives me the opportunity to observe how many individuals have told everyone what THEY think of Apple's new ad. Well, you know what? THEIR opinion doesn't matter, because they're not the group of people Apple wants to reach. Notice the lingering shots of very personal human activities, accomplished with nothing more than the touch of a finger or two - looking at family photos and visuals - turning the pages of an ebook - strumming a virtual guitar. For end users who are computer-averse or even computer-fearful, it's music to be reassured - "When technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful, even magical." In marketing iPads to the millions, this single line combined with the visuals is sheer genius.

Hear, hear!

However, you have to remember that we are the ones who are giving Apple all the ideas.

Or so it would seem . . .

Not that I believe that a female voice is a necessity to appeal to a female audience, but it's difficult to imagine that an ad with a female voice won't appear before too long.

My neighbor, kind of a techie guy, brought over his new Android tablet tonight. He paid $299. It's running Gingerbread. I got to play around with it. I don't own an iPad, but I've used them as well.

Overall impressions: It doesn't touch the iPad. It's slow. Scrolling and multi-touch are rocky at best. I just didn't like it. It's like the tablet version of Windows 3.1. It's uncomfortable to hold and the touch keyboard is not suited well for typing...I can type faster on my iPhone. I don't recall exactly what the hardware was. But overall, it's no match for even the iPad 1.

To win more heartshare, Apple has to shift users' paradigm.

BTW, until I get hold of my iPad 2, my emails will have to end with "Sent from my iPad too."

The video is fine. I could definitely see an iPad Film Festival. But most people are more likely to take a photo than shoot a video in everyday life.

The larger screen is actually great for framing birthday shots and then sharing it without everyone having to huddle over a tiny screen. It's a little heavy and the tiny (!) shutter button is in an awkward position. But the camera sensor is fine for the web but you can't even take decent photography in good light.

I don't see what this shyness is about holding up a tablet. It's not as if you're carrying your iMac over to a window to photograph a sunset!

Android tablet will have/do have sort of slow start like Android phones did in their time, but there's not much doubt they will catch up shortly.

Tegra 3 (a.k.a. Kal-El) tablets are expected to be out during this (north hemisphere) summer, and if nVidia manages to do that, Tegra 4 might be available at the time of iPad 3 release.

Tegra 3 is already expected to be 5x faster than Tegra 2, and some (questionable?) info on the web compares it's performance to Core 2 Duo.

I don't expect that iPad 3 will be able to raw-performance dominate whatever Android tablets will have to run on at that time... but then again, I don't think iPad really needs to dominate in RAW performance to be (and to remain) successful. Apple's mantra was always user experience before the raw performance, and they did well with that approach so far.

I wouldn't be surprised if this new add focus on experience vs. performance isn't part of that approach, anyway.

Plenty of Free Apps in Itunes for the Ipad and Ipad2. Also Apps which cost money and may be useful to some but not others.
Bottom Line: The selection and choice is yours and is available.

Well, developing an app is not easy as you type a comment here and whine about why is not free.

I mean it is not easy as you look, you're just obviously a consumer. Ok, imagine Apple announced the iPhone in 2007 and stated that they started working at it 2 1/2 years ago. The progress of iOS from that day to current? imagine how long that is? Another example a quality game. You know Starcraft 2? They started developing it in Year 2003, it was put on hold for a year in 2005 and it launched on July 27, 2010.. again imagine how long that is? And you can't just be a developer. It's not a job that anyone are able to do it. You need to be talented, really logical and have a creative mind how to pull things out.

I think think the way this portion of the market will play out won't quite replicate any of the key markets below which Apple's entered first before.

1. The iPhone breaking in with a new paradigm vs. the rest of the smart phone market.
2. The Mac (and Apple in gen'l) - first mass production graphical UI/mouse based computer vs. MS/IBM and MS/Clones - a period when still fresh out of the garage Apple ]['s share was already under assault from the OS backed by the company then synonymous with "computer" (IBM) and when the great majority of computing sales by $$ were to business.
3 (a/b). The "mp3" player/media content markets - where there were only other emergent players and no central web locus for any.
4. The Slate/Tab/Pad Market - where cynicism had developed around the category and Apple's breaking in again with a fresh paradigm (if borrowed mostly from the iPhone) and form factor, and again with Google and an army of HW companies following on willy-nilly.

1. In the phone case, Apple was limited to one carrier in the US for four years and to one or two everywhere else. Android's been able to be on as many as will sell phones from any of these HW companies. Signal problems and limited rate plans beyond their control have kept them tethered to limited sales possibilities (ATT, e.g., had no coverage in some states and atrocious coverage in some major metro areas - and that's just one carrier example in one country). And within those constraints, Apple's also eschewed other market segments - people who mostly or much prefer physical keyboards (about 15-25% I'd guess), those enticed into contracts by free or nearly free phones (10-20%??), and those who want cutesy, nichey phones designed for special demographics (young girls, e.g.). So given those factors, Android's rise isn't hard to understand.

2. In the PC case - the description already made the case. The young whipper-snappers had their asses handed to 'em by the combo of Big Blue and the rapacious B. Gates (who later turned around and knifed IBM itself in the back). Not to mention Macs were more expensive (which under Jobs II and the resurrection they've actually turned into a nice plus for themselves finally).

3a. In the media player case, Apple's fresh approach handed everybody's asses to them - first the companies (small and dedicated or large and dabbling) making the players, and then the purveyors of the content with the iTunes store. And ever since Apple's share of the first has remained above 70% (or more?) and of the second, they're the largest media content retailer on the planet. The player market remains theirs and the Touch is now a) a player, b) a very capable pocket gaming device and c) the small iPad Apple says it won't build (but already is).

3b. In the content sales arena, Apple's still doing great guns, but don't count Amazon out now that people are going there for Apps and Amazon already had the second-best online music store and biggest bookstore in the world (and have the Kindle portfolio, and have bought Audible.com). And Google has ambitions. And "music lockers" are about to hit. And Androids are, by default, also media-player devices.

4. In the slate/tab/pad case, Apple again has a year or more head start (again), with iPod-like market share.

And while Android already exists and can also scale its Phone OS and has its HW partners lined up, in this case there are no critical partners (cellcos) holding Apple back. Any iPad can be tethered to any tetherable phone or Mi-Fi signal from any cellco. Apple can compete across the board in terms of access to signal even if Android can have contracted/subsidized devices on maybe more carriers. (iPads could be subsidized too if Apple chooses, of course.)

Not to mentioned owning the best "ecosystem" and integration across multiple product lines.

And while Google and MS are corporate monsters like IBM was, Apple's now a bigger monster than any of 'em. Their garage days and lack of Q factor with developed markets are distant memories. And consumers are driving mobile computing more than businesses these days.

And while still a primo product, this time Apple's a price/value leader. And got locks on the best supplies of parts. And the best retail customer digital products service organization in the world. And will find function-specific reasons to justify any smaller or larger form factors it decides to debut in this space.

But pads are going to be competing in the computer space - with netbooks and notebooks as well as other touch screens - and there will be a market for low-end products particularly where Android and in other segments, where some of the following can play as well: MS (and MS/Nokia), HP, Rim, Moto, and possibly Amazon or even facebook. And maybe others.

Bottom line: So not as quick a market-share grab by the Droids in phones, not a decade-long near-collapse as in PC's and not a near monopoly as in players. So my estimate is Apple stays over 50% for a year or more (an easy pick given that they're still mostly competing against vaporware and machines that will have to mailed to Moto when the system's actually finished), so I'll push that to two years or more. And I believe remains the number one player (against all Droid makers and MS makers - as OS groups - and the rest) for at least several more. If not longer.

You expect people to make a living by giving their talent for free and live solely off of ad revenue?

Yeah, but I will soooooo point and laugh if I see you using your iPad as your main camera.

That was really interesting (and long ). I'm going to throw a few ideas into the mix that will muddy the waters and get you thinking

The markets you mentioned are all separate, and all had different factors acting on them.

At the moment the iPad may be similar, but in the next few years mainstream consumers will undergo a shift in the way they use computers that will cause a fundamental change in the devices they purchase.

Steve Jobs coined this the "post PC era", so we'll stick with that!

I think a lot of people misunderstand the idea of the "post PC era". The truth about the "post-PC era" is that it isn't about simply swapping your PC for an iPad, it's about separating your digital life from the hardware.

Once your digital life has been virtualized it can be accessed from a number of different devices, each of which are the best fit for the task they are performing - your smart phone, tablet (or probably multiple tablets), PC, laptop, smart TV, smart car and probably a bunch of others that are yet to be envisioned.

In a few short years mainstream consumers are going to stop thinking about on which device they saved a photo or a document - if it belongs to them the expectation will be that it is available on all devices which they own.

Which brings me to my first point...

In the "post-PC era", the platform will be king. What this means is that when all of a users information has been disengaged from specific hardware and is floating around in a virtual layer above the hardware, how devices interact with that information and each other, as well as the scope of a platform (and hence the ability to offer a sync'd experience across all devices a consumer uses) is going to become more important than each individual device.

The "platform" is already an important factor that consumers consider (if subconsciously), however in the "post PC era" will be the single dominant factor influencing purchases.


All of this makes sales predictions very interesting!

I think Palm is doomed (unfortunately). It really is a great OS, and the Pre+Pad integration looks first class... however HP is lacking the platform breadth of its competitors. Even if they do manage to get Palm onto PCs and laptops they are still missing the integrated services that glue devices together.

For the same reason I think RIM too, is doomed. They may stay around to fill a niche but their lack of a platform will put them behind their competitors.

Meego as well, I think will never catch on, despite Nokia's refusal to drop the OS.

The three companies that have the potential to come out on top in the "post PC era" are Apple, Google and Microsoft.

From Microsoft's side Windows 8 looks promising; however their inability to product a decent tablet and their ties to legacy support in enterprise puts a question mark over their ability to execute in the "post PC era".

Google seem to be in a strong position as we separate our data away from the hardware. Google are, and have always been "post PC". However their strategy appears haphazard. ChromeOS is Google's vision, where the device is nothing but a thin browser to host apps run from the cloud. Yet recent products (like Android and Google TV) show a lack of commitment to their vision.

Apple is by far in the strongest position. They have the best device platform at the moment spaning smartphones, tablets, desktops, notebooks and TV. The big question is how they are going to tie all of these devices together.

I am a confirmed Apple head and was an early adopter of the first iPad. I was ready to pounce on one of the new iPad 2s just for the camera alone...but now Im not.

Don't get me wrong...it's faster and the camera is way cool for face time.....but I think I'm gonna wait for the next MacBook air updates and nab one of those instead.

I know the ipad is not a laptop replacement, but I think I was hoping that the iPad 2 would become more open. Especially when I heard that an iMovie app was being released specifically to work on the néw iPad. It does look great, but when I found out that it can only edit video shot on apples ios devices(iPad, iPod & iPhone)....I was kinda bummed.

Im a photographer/videographer, so i love the portability of the iPad since I travel ALOT, but I guess I was hoping that I could not only transfer my photos from my dslr while on the road, but my HD videos too. It'd be soooo great to be able to edit my short HD videos and post them to YouTube or my blog while traveling. The iPad is already my favorite way to surf the web....if it just had alittle more openess tho....it'd be perfect.

Alas, it's not. And I am now looking to the MacBook air as the solution to my needs. Heck, the thing is small enough that I could even travel with both my iPad and it....as silly as that seems. I just need alittle more power and flexibility and the air gives that to me without the bulk.

I know I could nab a 13" MacBook pro....but I don't need an optical drive at all, nor the extra bulk. I know the MacBook pros will eventually do away with the optical drive...but that won't be for awhile. They were just updated.

I'd nab one right now if it had a sandy bridge and thunderbolt. Couldn't care less about the lack of keyboard lighting. I'd go for the 13" model with 256gb flash drive. A larger flash drive would make it even MORE perfect. A 500gb flash drive in that baby would be heaven.

They were last updated in October, so I am sure they'll see another one sometime in the next 6 months. Hopefully sooner than later. :-)

This is one photographer who can't wait! I'll plunk down my cash the day they are announced.

Until then...must....be.....patient. Lol

I see this as a continuation of the "Intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology" summation that Jobs has presented at the end of the last few Apple events.

It's freaking brilliant because it addresses the unspoken desire to get frustrating technology out of the way so that consumers can get on with the business of life.

Outside of Apple, I never hear any other tech company addressing this in their ads and product mix. (Sure. Others talk about it but rarely deliver.) It's about enabling people not about faster computers.

I hope it's just the beginning of a new direction for Apple ads. This would make a great series.

I think the idea is that the best software will be made by people who work in McDonalds and then hobby program in their spare time to produce a world class OS, and application suite.

Would you like that app with fries?

Yea, how come they did not put a 12 MP Full frame sensor with an 18-200 zoom lens? How about manual F stop and shutter speed so I can have manual exposures?

I can then ditch my D700 and use the iPad to snap photos

Oh geez. 12 MP is sooooooo five years ago. I want at least 36 MP capability, so I can take crap photos, and then crop in to the parts of the photos that I like, and then pretend that I'm a REAL photographer who knows what he's doing. </sarcasm>

Oh, and if the iPad 3 doesn't come with a built-in tripod, I'm throwing all my Apple gear in a wood-chipper and going Acer all the way. </also sarcasm>

Google seems to be doing OK with that plan.

There are also a number of smaller companies who seem to be doing just fine relying on ad-supported apps. Look at Zombie Farm or the 'Tap' series of apps, for example.

You can use Wine for iTunes? Thanks, I may look into that.

Also thanks for the useful feedback rather than the sadly far too common hostile responses people seem to deal out on this forum

Anybody know the music selection?

good to see a very thoughtful breakdown of the situation to discuss.

my take is that, as you note, Apple really has two tablets in the market now - the iPod touch as well as the iPad. you could say Apple is "cannilbalizing" its own iPod line with its tablets. but actually the former version of the PMP market is shrinking to just ultra portable devices like the Nano and Shuffle. and it would not surprise me at all to see Apple intro a 5"-6" version of the iPod touch this Fall to fill out its tablet product line. and Samsung, Archos, and others are already offering smaller Android tablets too.

so right off the bat, iPod touch sales should be combined with iPad sales to determine Apple's tablet market share. (you can also justify comparing total iOS sales including the iPhone with total Android OS product sales too, like today's AI article.)

the one thing you left out but others are now noticing is the pivotal role of the Apple's retail stores in the tablet market. for smartphones, the telcos are the unavoidable service gatekeepers, and also huge retail chains. that was very much to Android's advantage in some ways. but with tablets the telcos are much less important - you don't even need one. and since tablets are not an everyday necessity like cell phones - a "discretionary purchase" - consumers shop for them differently. they want to check one out in the store hands-on for a bit. maybe a few times before they decide. Apple's stores show the iPad off as good as possibly can be done this way, with Apple staff providing total and helpful positive reinforcement. and free help for buyers afterwards is available too. whereas at Best Buy and the rest, the Android tablets are just one more gadget on some aisle filled with other gadgets, and the salesguy just wants you to buy anything. plus a $99 Geek Squad contract to get help later if you need it!

and then there's the integrated ecosystems - but that has been discussed a thousand times already.

so bottom line, including the iPod touch(es) i expect Apple to hold about 2/3 of the overall tablet market for the foreseeable future - like 5 years. and it could be even 3/4 if the Android OEM's start to totally fragment Android by "forking" it into their own non-Google versions (now enabled by the new Amazon app store) in an effort to avoid the otherwise inevitable Android race to the bottom in pricing.

I have actually used the tablet version of Windows 3.1, called "Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing"...on ancient tablets that are heavier than modern day 17" MacBook Pros. Yes, Microsoft had been going after tablet computing for a long, long time. They haven't figured out that you cannot substitute a pen or finger for an OS designed to use a two-button mouse. It always produces a clunky, awkward result.

Pretty much agree on all counts.

I'll note that Google's been really quiet about Chrome OS lately (I remember one slightly defensive, "Oh yeah, we're forging ahead on that. Fer shure." comment a few months back) - but I think their money's more on Honeycomb, and how aggressively and how far they'll go with Chrome OS is a more open-seeming question than in the first blush of its announcement.

Further, as "the platform" comes to dominate, let's take a quick look at that, as the ultimate platform is the internet. I've taken to calling "the Cloud" the true relevant OS of the future where all other devices are clients, or more concisely, that we're all starting to run BOSS (the Big Operating System in the Sky).

Backup and sync companies like SugarSync, e.g., are well on the way to making all those pix, vids, songs, PDF's, etc. as easily interchangeable between an iPad, a Win PC and an Android phone as between an iPad, iPhone and Mac. BOSS is highly agnostic about which hardware and software clients it will serve.

Which is why companies like RIM may yet still be able to stick around. And gives HP a chance to do some interesting things with their Web OS assets. HP's got enough heft and a long-standing corp culture that's enabled it to make a number of major transitions over the decades (e.g., from calculator maker to largest PC maker). And despite Moto's many missteps over the years, they've kept managing to do enough interesting things to stick around since their days as a premiere car radio purveyor.

Marketing, nimbleness, design and execution will matter the most here. And I'm not sure, given the BOSS factor if breadth alone belongs in that sentence or a step below, but in either case, that still leaves Apple with the brightest star in the current firmament.

I also notice you didn't include any mention of my notions that Amazon's also thick in the mix. If any major corporation other than Google is a true creature of the cloud and has a wide range of hooks, it's Jeff Bezos' shop. And who knows what kind of player facebook might be as it forages further from its beginnings.

MS is too mired in legacy and bureaucracy to regain the leading edge IMHO, and my sense is it'll become even more tethered to its business PC, Win Server, Office and Exchange base (which will provide a market for Win Tab 8 and Win Phone 8 if they're even adequate) while holding the low end of the end-user PC market, i.e., will become more infrastructure-oriented just as IBM did as it evolves its possibly promising Live stable.

One more factor neither of us mentioned will also come the fore relatively soon: the rise of systems in Asia not dependent on either US software or hardware. Or even at first, US users. And this will in time do much to remake the playing field.

All great fun to watch though from our catbird seats in the early 21st!!

I don't think it's possible to tease out who has the biggest share of "the" mobile market because it's not a single market, and the major players are working on completely different assumptions about what the market really is.

The real question is, who do each platform owner consider their customers to be? Apple considers the people who buy their hardware to be their customers. They write software and provide low-margin services like iTunes to make the experience the best they can and make their hardware a desirable purchase,

Traditionally, Microsoft has treated the hardware manufacturers as their customers, but with the caveat that their business model has been more like colonialism, with captive "customers" and all the power concentrated in the mother country (Redmond.) As they move into the mobile market with WP7, it'll be interesting to see if they can shed that colonialist mindset and treat their handset manufacturers as true customers and not colonial possessions. My money's on no, but if they can they might have a leg up on Google's model:

Putting up a smokescreen of treating the hardware makers as their customers, but giving their product away for free to them in order to create more openings for their real customers: every spammer on the internet, to whom they're pimping out their end-users eyeballs. As more and more people see through the smokescreen, and Android becomes less and less "open", I see the Android surge declining.

It's too soon to tell which business model will dominate "the" mobile market, or if there's room for all these, and others nobody's come up with yet. I do know one thingif Apple's business model was the eyeball-pimp one, everybody would be howling for their blood, but somehow when Google does it, it's OK.

Who cares? He'll have his sunset photo, and all you'll have is a false sense of superiority.

that's definitely the Google idea. but i think Apple is going to take a different approach based on user perception instead of the technical arrangements - iOS and Mac OS X together (iOS 5 combined with Mac OS X Lion) will deliver anything you got anwhere on any Apple device or service to you seamlessly anyplace with any Apple device you are using anytime. instead of Home Sharing, it will become Universal Sharing. and instead of just iTunes it will be all Apple software - all of iLife, iWork, MobileMe apps, pro applications, and the rest. from a consumer viewpoint, it will just work.

now a lot of that will technically involve cloud storage, streaming, and buffering. but users won't need to fiddle with that at all (tho technies will insist on manual access). once they turn Sharing on, as now the content will just pop up in an app's list of files, however you have them organized. things will just work. (Parental controls will allow this to be limited of course.)

the only real advantage of the cloud is other devices holding your files don't have to be powered up, logged in, on line, and applications open to share the files on them. but cheap big SSD's are going to replace optical drives, probably within 5 years. after all, very few consumers aquire even 1T of data. so a default always on/sleep mode set up (like Apple TV now) becomes very do-able, and the smarter OS can bypass the log in and application-open limits of today. one crucial thing the cloud will handle are the security safeguards, but that will be invisible to the user.

likewise, how much of what you are doing in an app that is actually happening someplace in the internet cloud will be invisible to the user. like a lot of iOS apps are today. you don't bother to think about what is local and what is web when you use them. there are no settings about that. you don't care as long as you can get to your saved data and setups anytime.

it will all be user-centric. it won't be hierarchical, it will be "magical." coming soon!

My superiority bubble is coated in kevlar and ripstop nylon. You can't burst it. Heh.

If the photo is GOOD, then I'll go exercise my superiority somewhere else.

It probably won't be good, but it will BE, and it's his business whether he likes it or not. He may FRAME the shot between two sweaty Corona bottles and capture an image that will take him back to the mood of that moment for the rest of his life.

Your bubble won't float with all that "character armor." (See Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism.)